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Day 2 – Thursday May 20th – The second day began with Kim and Tim meeting with Jo Wehring, UK Market Manager for Wines of South Africa (WOSA), www.wosa.co.za. Jo discussed ways that WOSA could be of a help to us in helping to eastablish our brand / wines here in the UK. WOSA were also hosting a South African Chenin Blanc tasting which highlighted the success that South Africa is having with this versatile varietal. Onwards to a tasting on the Seckfords Agencies stand, www.seckfordagencies.co.uk, for the second time with Peter Finlayson where we tasted his complete range of stunning wines. Here we were joined again by Tara O’Leary, http://winepassionista.com/, and Lynda Harvey, www.thewineplace.co.uk. Lynda has been a keen follower of Seven Springs Vineyard and is opening a wine shop in Berkshire in the near future. We then spent some time looking at different screw enclosures for future use with our wines. After a brief lunch we met with ex sommelier Richard Mitton from Worthing who hopes to set up a wine shop in Sussex later this year. Our next port of call was a tasting with Hein Koegelenberg, http://heinkoegelenberg.typepad.com/blog/, CEO of La Motte, www.la-motte.com, and owner of Leopards Leap Wines, www.leopards-leap.com. Hein gave us a fantastic tour of the La Motte winery when we were in the Cape in March and again tasting his range of wines here confirmed them as real class acts. The Pierneef range in particular standing out, if you like syrah / shiraz then get your hands on a bottle or two of these wines. Lastly, but not least, we tasted the wines from the De Wetshof Estate from Robertson, www.dewetshof.com. Brothers Peter, winemaker, and Johan de Wet, Sales and Marketing, are well known to us and their range of Chardonnays are always well received.

We left the show tired but encouraged. The band of South African wine producers are a great bunch of people and we feel proud to become one of them.

Ex Sommelier, now wine writer, blogger and wine ‘passionista’, Tara Devon, has written an article on Seven Springs Vineyard on her blog. Check out Tara’s work on the link below. Thanks for the article Tara and your passion for South African wine really shows. Once our wines are ready for tasting we will get some bottles to you for a tasting and a review.

Seven Springs is pleased to announce the appointment of Riana van der Merwe as winemaker. Riana comes highly recommended to us by friends Guillaume Nell, winemaker at Backsberg Cellar Estate (http://www.backsberg.co.za) and Corina du Toit, Sales and Marketing Manager at Eikendal Vineyards in Stellenbosch (http://www.eikendal.com). Riana will be responsible for making our first wines and we are confident she will respond to the challenge, she has our full support.

25 year old Riana said ” This is a fantastic opportunity for me to be able to work with Tim and Vaughan and to be able to make their dreams come true. I am proud to be associated with such positive people and I will do my level best to ensure we make some of South Africa’s best wines as the potential is definitely here”